Saturday, November 30, 2013

Tis' the Season and all that....

I spent my morning at work watching videos of Black Friday aftermath and wishing that I was born on another planet. I frequent a blog about working retail and the stories this year were horrid, far beyond what I had previously heard. Meanwhile, when I access my favorite news site, all I got were coverage about Black Friday and upcoming Cyber Monday deals. Nothing, not a fucking word about the helicopter crash in Glasgow that killed at least eight people….what a country.
Anyway, I was feeling bitter and when I feel bitter I blog. I thought that with all the upcoming buying and gifting we should really be focusing on doing something good for mankind. So, without further ado, here are several options of Gifts that Give:



Choose from a selection of t-shirts for men and women. The proceeds help operate an organization that helps to end human trafficking. Oh, and if you have a couple of gently used bras lying around, they’ll take those off your hands for you too. Check them out!



This locally operated program teaches sewing skills to refugees newly arrived in our very own state. Their etsy shop has a myriad of beautiful, handmade sew-crafts. Perfect gifts for moms and sisters with the proceeds funding a much needed education and employment program right here in Denver.



This one should be pretty obvious. You’ve no doubt seen (Red) around your stores already; many of their items are sold everywhere from Starbucks to liquor stores. But if you’re planning on getting little Johnny an Ipod or a set of headphones, go to (Red).org and shop around. For a little more than you’re already spending, you can help a global program fight AIDS. And when I say they have everything, I mean everything: from housewares to toys to food and beverage.



Good news! If you already shopped at one of their partner stores like Brooks Brothers or William Sonoma, you might have already had (and hopefully taken) the chance to donate to this wonderful charity. St. Jude’s means it when they say they never turn away a family who is unable to pay. Worried you missed your chance, don’t worry: Their online site has a full shop full of beautiful, wonderful gifts for everyone on your list. And for the old farts out there who aren’t tech savvy, never fear. You can request a catalogue with all the goodies inside for easy ordering.



Hate humans? Good for you. Don’t worry, your furry friends will benefit from your purchase of just about anything cat/dog/hamster related on the internet.   You can shop for people who love animals or you can shop for animals that love people. The best part? No sappy commercial featuring Sarah McLachlan making you cry your eyes out.



For the exotic animal lover in your life, head to the World Wildlife Fund, where you can figuratively adopt a tiger for that slightly crazy person in your life that always says “OMG they’re so cute, can I cuddle them?” With all the stuffed animals and dolls and pretty pictures of endangered animals, this is the perfect place to shop for kids. Give them something that will instill a message of conservation.

These are just a few of my favorite places to shop for holiday gifts. Don’t see your favorite charity? Prefer to support kids with ass cancer or whatever. Go to google and type in “kids with ass cancer” followed by the word shop and google will take you to the place where you can buy crap to support your charity. It’s all very simple.
Look, I know this time of year is the time when all of us start running around like a chicken with its head cut off going “but what do I get great aunt Loraine?” Get them something from this list because even if they hate it, they can’t say anything. Hating a charity gift is like speaking ill of the dead; something only socially acceptable when blackout drunk.
So if we could have less of this


And a little more of this:


And this:


Or even this:
(Red) Ipod Nano

....then the world could be a little brighter this holiday season. Did I mention that all this stuff is available online. Yeah, you don't even have to get your ass out of your chair. You just click some buttons and warehouse workers do all the work for you. No need to come harass the underpaid employees at Walmart.

There you go. Holiday problems solved.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

BOOK!!!!

For those of you who don't know this about me, I am actually a writer in my free time. (The girl with the blog writes? What? No way.) Yes way, I am a writer. In a determination to not be one of those struggling writers that lives in a one bedroom shack in New York eating sewer rats because meat is too expensive, I'm going to do the smart thing and release my book on Kindle.
A lot of people in the writing world (ie. everyone I went to college with) believe that self-publishing is the equivalent of prostitution in the literary world. However, this smart hussy learned that by publishing on Kindle, I not only maintain the rights to my book (something Simon and Schuster won't even consider) but I also get 70% of my profits. Remember that I'm trying not to be a starving artist, so yes, to an extent this is about money.
I write young adult fiction (the literary equivalent of Harry Potter) so don't judge. I write YA fiction for several reasons, not the least of which is because it is fun. Being a high school teacher has made it very apparent to me exactly what our children need as role models in the world. I also see what subjects my students never get exposed to in the classroom. Writing books targeted at young people gives me a chance to teach them things I may never get the chance to teach them in my classroom. Also, my book will probably never be assigned reading in a classroom, so my students might actually read it.
Okay, now that I have fully explained myself, drum roll please..... (patpatpatpatpatpatap....)

Cornerstone Cafe


Following a scruffy stray cat, Asher Levine Norris runs away from boarding school to avoid going home for the holidays. When she arrives in San Francisco and gets a job at the tiny Cornerstone CafĂ©, she thinks her only worry is getting caught by the police and being shipped back to her deranged mother. But the Cornerstone has a secret that is going to make Asher’s job a lot harder than just brewing decaf lattes. Asher gets buried neck deep in a fifty year old mystery involving some otherworldly creatures, an abandoned bunker on Alcatraz and mischievous cat.  

There you have it. Everything else you need to know can be found here: Cornerstone Cafe

Thanks everybody! Ciao! 

Monday, August 13, 2012

Because I Know What Love Is...


Okay, to begin with, I’m fine. For those of you who saw my status and went into a blind panic arranging walks and car washes, (Madison) thank you, but you can stop reading and go find more pressing and more deserving causes. For the rest of you, I want to tell you a story.
It’s a love story.
And a medical drama.
Kind of like Grey’s Anatomy but without the voice over and the doctors having sex in the store room.
This goes back a while. For those of you who don’t know me intimately, I’ve always been a picky eater. Not like a five year old who won’t try anything unless it’s been slathered in catsup, but more like I can look at a menu item and tell if it’s going to make me sick. Sometimes everything sounds good, sometimes nothing sounds good. Either way I can pretty much tell what’s going to make me happy and what will make me friends with the toilet. But sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes I’m stupid and I ignore my intuition in favor of pizza and ice cream.
After a while I realized that while being a picky eater was pretty normal, the lengths to which my body seemed to dislike any food in general was not normal. My family and my boyfriend encouraged me to go to my doctor, which I did. After three failed diets and the gamut of liver/blood/kidney tests, I was loosely diagnosed with stress induced Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
IBS is actually fairly common. There isn’t a lot that can be done for it. For more severe cases it can be managed with medication, but for milder cases like mine, one simply adjusts their diet accordingly.
So no big deal, right? And for the next few years it was perfectly manageable. Now we fast forward to two years after the diagnosis to about four or five months ago.
Late March to early April I was under a lot of stress. I was working two jobs, student teaching, taking classes, preparing to graduate, dealing with a myriad of personal issues and some family stuff on the side; so my stress induced IBS was in full swing. Then I started to notice new symptoms: mild joint pain I dismissed with too much fun at the gym or standing on my feet all day. The headaches were from doing lesson plans and studying into the dead of night. The nausea was simply my IBS coupled with a lack of healthy food options at my school.
But when certain things started coming out the other end; things that should never come out down there, I realized that they couldn’t be ignored.
(For those of you who want to be spared the details, skip ahead to the end. But you’ll miss the best part; this is a love story after all.)
Blood. At first it was just a little. But pretty soon there was a lot of it. A lot more than anyone should ever see in a toilet bowl. What’s worse is that I wasn’t eating much, working fifty hours or more and loosing blood at an alarming rate. I kept hoping that it would stop, heal, go away, whatever, but after two or three weeks I knew it was time to talk to someone.
Let me be clear that the idea of talking about bodily functions with anyone with whom you are romantically involved  is mortifying. Talking about blood in your stool is pretty much off limits. Every disease comes with a stigma and like my father’s prostate cancer, my disease has to do with a part of my body that rarely sees the sun let alone gets discussed with civility.
But I knew I had to tell him, so I sucked it up and told Taylor about my poo.
He wasn’t grossed out. He didn’t dump me for a more civilized, healthier woman. He wasn’t hysterical and panicky. In fact, he was just Taylor. He held me and kissed me and told me it was probably nothing, but that we should see my doctor again.
For some reason, talking to your doctor about what comes out of your butt is actually much easier than talking to it with anyone else. This is probably because doctors are just supposed to nod and then tell you what to do to fix it. I went back to my doctor and was prescribed another plethora of tests, including a stool test. For those of you who thought a stool test is as simple as taking a dump in a cup, you’re wrong. In reality it is much more complicated and much more humiliating.
And when I came home and complained about the stool test to Taylor, he cheered me up with the “Check the Poo” song from Scrubs.
There’s only so much that a general doctor can do. So when the tests came back inconclusive, I was sent to a specialist. Gastroenterology is the doctoring of the digestive tract. We call them GI doctors (because Butt Doctor is probably no PC.) I went to the hospital to have a talk with my GI.
I was prescribed a colonoscopy. These procedures are usually reserved for people in their forties, in particular men in their forties. For example my doctor has a poster in his office that reads “If seventy five is the goal, at forty five check the hole.”
I was a twenty three year old woman getting a test common for men twice my age.
To make matters worse, they only offer this procedure at two times of the day: Ungodly early and even more ungodly early. More so, I couldn’t drive myself because I would be under anesthesia. Both my parents work, so they would be no help. But along came my super awesome boyfriend who offered to wake up and drive me on my day off.
And no matter how many times I apologized, Taylor just told me that it was his job to take care of me.
No matter what.
The day before the procedure, you can’t eat anything other than popsicles and chicken broth (and Jell-o, but none of the good flavors.) Worse yet, you have to drink this god awful bowel cleanser which tastes like someone ground up a bunch of grape sweet tarts and then pissed in it. And you can’t chug it, you have to savor that crap.
Once you drink the stuff, it starts to work. It’s a bowel cleanser, so it does exactly what you would expect it to do. I spent most of the night in the bathroom, exhausted and disgusted with myself. But every time I came out, Taylor was there to wrap me in his arms and kiss all my fears away.
You drink the bowel cleanser twice. Once the night before and once four hours before the procedure. So I was up at oh-dark-thirty to spend a few more hours in the bathroom. This was coupled with waking up to the news of the Century 16 shooting, so my nausea was also personal in nature. So while the rest of the country woke up to tragedy and shock, I was sitting with my boyfriend in a doctor’s office, waiting to have a scope shoved up my butt.
Taylor stayed the whole time. He never left. And when I came out, he cuddled me and kissed me and told me I was beautiful and that he loved me. He didn’t even make fun of me (much) when I kept flirting with my elderly nurse and tried to get her to tell me where she got her awesome scrubs. After all that he took me home to sleep off my drug induced haze.
It takes a few weeks for the biopsies to come back, but in the meantime was prescribed a suppository (if you don’t know what it is, look it up.) The medicine helped relieve the initial symptoms, but it came with a long range of side effects: Nausea, sore throat, stomach cramps…and my favorite, flatulence.
Oh yeah, lots of farting. This of course made the idea of going out in public pretty mortifying, but I worried that this might be the last straw for Taylor. I mean, I’m not the sort of girl who is too suave to fart in front of her boyfriend, but there’s a pretty big difference between the little gas giggle and a full blown trumpet every few minutes.
You of course know by this point in the story that I had no reason to worry.
Taylor did what he always does: loves me. And even though I feel about as sexy as a wood pecker, he takes good care of me, telling me that I’m beautiful and that he loves me.
And he didn’t even freak out when the test came back that I had Chrone’s Disease.
 For those of you who don’t know, Chrones is an autoimmune disorder. Long story short, my stomach and my intestines hate each other and send out little antibodies like war planes to cause the other one pain. For my geek friends: my coding is whack.
The disease is perfectly manageable. And even though it doesn’t exist yet, I will probably see a cure in my lifetime. In the meantime, I get to start a long regiment of medications, more tests and more dealing with my insurance. Mostly I get to take shots like a diabetic (not like an alcoholic) only I have to put the little gun in my thigh. Taylor and Madison see this as a reasonable excuse for me to wear miniskirts as often as possible. I have to agree. (I have fabulous legs.)
So tomorrow Taylor has to once again wake up at the ass-crack of dawn to take me to get X-rays. It probably won’t be the last time either. I’ll be dealing with this disease for the rest of my life. Or should I said, we’ll be living with it for the rest of our lives.
(Those of you who skipped the details can reenter our story here.)
Taylor is the man that I want to spend the rest of my life with. If I or anyone else ever had doubts of his love for me, this story erases them. He is without a doubt the greatest boyfriend in the history of boyfriends.
For better or for worse.
In sickness and in health.
I know Taylor will love me no matter how much my insides hate me, no matter how picky I eat and no matter how much I fart.
And that is true love. 

Sunday, July 22, 2012

In Wake of Violence...End Violence


Back again:
I know it’s been like a super long time since I’ve posted anything. I could cite a whole list of logical reasons for why I’ve been so absent lately (student teaching, graduating, job hunting, family, medical, travel, etc.) but the honest to goodness reason that I’ve been so absent is because I haven’t had any inspiration. I’m still out there looking for Trolls, but let’s face it, they’re pretty predictable creatures. I don’t want to get boring, so I’ve been searching for something original.
However, recent events have actually forced me to come out and once again return to my written roots to preach my word. As everyone in the entire freaking world knows, Friday was a pretty shitty day for Colorado. A state with a long history of gun violence issues, we were in the news once again for another massacre. Of course, the fact that it occurred at a midnight showing of the Dark Knight Rises has only added to the media hype, but at the center of all this we shouldn’t ever forget the truth: This wasn’t about the goddamn movie; this wasn’t about the time of the showing, the people inside, the characters or anything else. This was all about one wacko who decided he was going to murder innocent people in cold blood. It’s sick and it’s pretty hard to deal with.
I actually grew up around Aurora, Colorado. I went to High School maybe ten miles away from there and I remember going to that theater all the time. Last year my student teaching was at a school only about five minutes away from where it happened. When I first heard the news, I was literally on the edge of my seat praying that none of my students had been in that theater. Even though no one I was incredibly close to died, this still hits home in a hard way.
So now its Sunday, and you would think that things have settled down a little bit. We’re all still waiting on the why and the what happened, but honestly I think everyone secretly wants to move on. Not forget, mind you, but really push forward and rise above. Then, of course, I got invited to this Facebook group that is counter-protesting Westboro Baptist Church when they inevitably come to picket the funerals/memorials of the people killed. Go, Colorado, Go! The group was all about arranging carpooling to the site, getting water and food to the volunteers, even arranging people who volunteered at ComicCon to wear their shirts. Pretty cool.  (Sadly I can’t attend because of work issues and because I’m not a protest person, but my heart supports them fully.)
For my lazy readers, it’s just an article from Huffington about Westboro wanting to protest and the usual bullshit that Fred Phelps and his followers spew like the chick from the Exorcist (The original, not the nine remakes.) As my dedicated readers already know, I had to browse the comments, expecting the usual anti-religious vs. pro-freedom of speech I see whenever I come across and article about Westboro.  Instead, I was shocked and disgusted to find this:
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
32 minutes ago (12:33 AM)
Could they let the shooter out of jail for just one day? Please?
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
32 minutes ago (12:33 AM)
I feel motivate to become an NRA convert, just for this Church's visit!
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
33 minutes ago (12:32 AM)
Why can't a lone gunman take out his psychotic anger on the WBC one day? How much longer is Gawd going to make us wait on that one?
33 minutes ago (12:48 AM)
When someone walks into the Westboro Baptist Church and opens fire all we can say is THANK GOD FOR THE SHOOTER !
44 minutes ago (12:38 AM)
"God" needs to send a shooter to the westboro baptist church and their pickets. just saying.

And so on and so on. There was seriously like eight pages of this shit. All I could think, was are these idiots behind the keyboards serious? I get it, we all hate Westboro: they aren’t a real church, they’re a bunch of brainless Bible thumpers with a private agenda. They do asshole things like picket funerals of soldiers. Coming from a family of a military background, I hate them more than most people do. BUT COME ON!
We just spent the last 48 fucking hours talking about how senseless the violence in Aurora was. We held hands, sang songs and prayed for an end to violence and THIS IS THE SHIT YOU CHOOSE TO SPEW ON THE INTERNET!?!
You idiots are as bad as Westboro. We’ve already had so much pain from this weekend; we don’t need any more bloodshed. You should feel ashamed of yourselves. Do you think you’re fucking clever? Do you think that violence will help end violence? Do you think that if you were to kill everyone who disagreed with your point of view, the world would be a better place? Do you honestly, in the wake of tragedy, advocate for more violence? How does that honor the victims? How does that solve anything?
WAKE UP INTERNET! There will always be idiots. There will always be sick fuckers. But saying stuff like this? That makes you one of them.
Because I felt no humor in this forum would be appropriate, I decided to leave a warning:
To all those who advocate violence against Westboro, remember that the church makes a majority of its money from provoking people into aggression and then suing the pants off them. Before you open fire on some harmless village idiots with handmade signs, think about this: Miguel de Unamuno warns us that “It is truer to say that martyrs create faith more than faith creates martyrs.”
Go home, hug your family and watch the sunrise. Ignore the people who seek to defile your heart.

So I leave everyone with this warning: Already our world is desensitized to violence. Already we numb ourselves to human pain and say things that we shouldn’t in order to cover our fear and anger. Feel your emotions, live them, and release them. Do not ever advocate violence on another unless you are willing to fight with your own soul.
Ciao lupi.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Say Gay....go ahead, I dare you....

Sorry it’s been so long, the new job has kept me running on the hamster wheel all week.
So, just when I thought the world couldn’t get any worse, I found this lovely person: (Shit yes, it’s now personal.) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/LindaPeterJones?action=comments
So this woman (I’m making an assumption here), person I guess would be better, has been spending the better part of her pathetic life posting crap on huffington post. (I’m the kettle, if you’re wondering.) But it’s how she comments and what she comments that makes me cringe.
I found her while I was wandering the comment section of an article relating to Tennessee’s horrible new bill that basically prevents to the teaching or even reference of homosexuality in public schools. Which, I mean, they pretty much already outlaw talking about sex at all in schools based on societal mores, but these people are talking about not being able to offer help to LGBT students, not being able to form GSA groups or allowing teachers to make any reference to LGBT culture, history or well, anything gay.
As a teacher (yay new job) I find this particularly disgusting because I know that a lot of LGBT kids don’t get support at home and the only other place they can get support is school. Preventing students from getting this kind of help, for whatever reason, is to treat them like they are less than human.
Speaking of less than human, let’s take a look at Mizz Linda Peter Jones’ posts:
Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 18:23:52 in Gay Voices
“Typo-this country was sane until gay rights started-fo­rgot to type along with that statement except for how African Americans were treated. In other words, blacks should of been given rights and gays never should of started this unsound temper tantrum to not be seen as touched and perverted.”

 Tennessee's 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Advances In House Despite Protests

Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 18:09:24 in Gay Voices
“Straight kids do not want to hear about gay sex and they should not have to in school pervert.”
Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 18:01:31 in Gay Voices
“Lol, here we go with this lie now. Animals NEVER sodomize each other. I wish you could hear how we straights laugh at gays for that one. Your lies are so see through. And so illogical.”
Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 17:22:39 in Gay Voices
“What the gay community wants to do to this world IS mean,”
This one is my favorite:
Commented Feb 16, 2012 at 15:52:02 in Gay Voices
“Hardly any gay people kill themselves­. We are sick of this lie. More people who were molested by gays kill themselves­.”

Seriously, I could go on for pages about how absolutely idiotic this woman is. To be clear, if you don’t support gay rights well….I think you’re  a jackass, but you’re entitled to your own opinions. What you are not entitled to do, no matter how damn tempting that comment button on all these “gay” articles may be, is to be deliberately cruel. That’s my job, back off. (Still the kettle.)
Anyway, I had to take a couple hours break from this article before I could formulate a reply that didn’t involve me calling her ten kinds of ho-bag and condemning her to the world entity equivalent of Hell in ever culture/subculture. For a minute I considered soliciting her for lesbian sex, but I felt that would be more offensive than helpful, all though the sight of her at her computer getting my well phrased lesbian love not (will you go to prom with me, check yes or no) sanitizing her hands, mind and computer with Purell was very tempting.
This is what I came up with instead:
Dear Linda Peter Jones,
As compelling an argument you presented, especially the ones where you resort to calling everyone and their mother a pervert and degrade us for lying, covering up the truth and basically every possible combination of the two; I simply must disagree with your point(s) about the gay community as a whole. I would love to explain my view point, but since you are highly unlikely to listen, I will skip ahead to the part where you reply. I have taken the courtesy of creating a fill in the blank answer for your benefit.
“You ______(ying, liar, deceitful, two faced)_______(Explicative), what you don’t know about ______(derogatory name for the LGBT community) is that they ____________(blatant blanket statement with absolutely no proof, logical, religious or otherwise to back it up) and that they want to _________(generalized statement about homosexuals and our children) Us ______(obligatory statement made for all straight people in Tennessee) are currently (Laughing, praying, crying, jogging) for your ________(spiritual being.)”
You’re welcome.

I kind of hope she uses it.
Doubtful. 

Monday, January 23, 2012

And They Say Chivalry is Dead...

Wow…Two in one day. Who knew my reader(s) would get so lucky. This one was an article that was actually submitted to me by my boyfriend (Gasp, a blogger who has a boyfriend? What? I also have a career, a masters and two bachelors…internet stereotypes beware!) I really enjoyed reading this article for two reasons: 1. I’m not a gamer so if provided me with interesting insight to the gamer community and gave me a greater appreciation for the men and women behind it. 2. While my strain for education is Social Justice, I am about as far from being a feminist as you can get, which leads me to look at this article from a very different point of view.
To outline, the article is about the male privilege of geekdom for gamers and comic nerds. The author is exceedingly well informed and first and foremost I must tip my hat to his glorious eloquence. (No sarcasm intended.) His well-written argument informs the reader that there is an unfair dichotomy for women in fandom wherein women are overly sexualized and treated as inferior creatures to the male protagonists. In his article, he describes that even the action heroines (pronounced hear-oin, not heroin) are required to dress in sexually fantasized outfits that would be really hard to kick ass in even if she wasn’t a size negative 4.
The author describes something called male-privilege, which can be loosely translated as the same thing as White privilege but with females and males as opposed to majority-minority race relations (See Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh.) This assumes that men are afforded certain privileges based solely upon their gender and that women are treated as only women first and as anything else second. He describes an incident involving a girlfriend who entered a comic store with him and was instantly accosted with the leering comicboy who stared at her chest. Said comicboy is later admonished for driving the young woman out of the store by his inappropriate behavior ; comicboy says the girl doesn’t get it because she’s not a gamer and doesn’t understand that girls can be sexy and bad-ass.
(The article can, as always be read in its entirety here: http://kotaku.com/5868595/nerds-and-male-privilege)
Here is where the author begins his argument that the gaming industry is slated towards male gamers and creates a counter-culture of girlgeeks who feel left out unless they get boobjobs and start dressing in the scraps leftover on their mother’s sewing table.  To which I have to respond with “NO FUCKING DUH!”
This is the pitfall of every media outlet to ever exist. Do you think they offered Kate the job for Underworld they also said “You can either wear a pair of pants that breath and move well so you can fight or you can wear a skintight leather catsuit and a fucking cape?” Do you think she would ever turn down a fucking cape? Hell no. This all goes back to the singular major statement of modern economics:
SEX SELLS!
And not just to men. Sex sells to women too, in fact, it sells better to women than men because men are primarily visual thinkers and see a skin tight outfit and like it whereas women see a skin tight outfit, like it and want to BUY IT! Of course gamer culture buys into this because otherwise the industry would die a pathetic and stuttering death. Not to mention that while the comic/gamer industry is majority male, the publishing industry, ie. Those people who produce the comics and related material, is majority female. That’s right, a man might have created ass-cheeks McGee for the Bomb Girl comics, but most likely a female publicist said “This is the shit! Put it on the shelves!” Bottom line, sex sells, especially to women. Just look at Cosmo magazine, retailed towards women, and covers the front with scantily clad celebrities and catchphrases about sex and vaginas.
Here is where the author and I differ on opinions: I like that I get treated differently because I’m a girl. In fact, a lot of girls do. We strive to be treated unequally, we secretly love that you notice our breasts and our asses, that you compliment the skanky outfit I wore to the bar last weekend. I love that I am treated differently because I’m a woman because you recognize me for what I am: THE MOTHER-FUCKING CREATOR OF LIFE!
(Don’t give me that shit about it taking two to tango, because thanks to science your sperm is no more sentimental to me then when I borrow my roommate’s Nutella to make a sandwich.)
This blog is about fighting off Trolls and I think this post has gone the long way around that. So, onto the comments section. Surprisingly the comments I read were relatively well informed, and mostly dominated by a user named Shinta used eloquence equal to the original author to counter argue the point. This is what good writing does people, it inspires conversation.  Most of the comments were exceedingly long winded and slightly repetitive, fighting the good fight back and forth without any forward motion (WWI trench warfare anyone?) At one point, Shinta writes:
“Do you honestly think that people haven't "called it" by predicting exactly what these articles always argue? If you read the comments, almost all of them say that this is getting really old because they've heard the exact same argument repeatedly from multiple authors.”
Wow, called it, huh? That and some idiot called OtakuMan24 keeps trying to reinforce his point with dumbass pictures he found on google.
Back and forth, back and forth, walls of text and no real answers. Also, no suitable fodder for a blog about Trolls (why do I have this article again?) So I thought, what should we do to solve this problem and possibly end what was once a stimulating but now a repetitive argument? Easy, give them a solution to talk about.
When I was a freshman in high school, I started attending an all-girls Catholic high school. When I tell this to my friends, peers, colleagues, students etc, I noticed that girls only get to the all-girls point in the name and run away screaming and crying because they would miss boys too much (trust me, I did) and guys hear Catholic school girl and dive off into fantasy land where I’m wearing a short plaid skirt, engaging in a raging lesbian pillow fight and being spanked. My freshman year we didn’t really have a dress code except that we couldn’t wear jeans to school. By my senior year they had implemented a dress code that was both rigorous, wordy and just south of being a uniform. This experience helped me form the following response:

To Whom it May Concern,
My name is Ani Wuman I am the chairman of the board of Stupid Crap Men Come Up With. Given the extensive list of complaints we have received on both sides of the argument from this article, the board and I have come up with the following compromise:
Beginning Spring of 2012, all video games and comics with be subjected to a regulation dress code, as follows:
·         Girls will not wear skirts that are fewer than four inches above the knees.
·         All tops must be have a collar and the hem must touch the top of the pants/skirt
·         Any boobs that achieve a size previously unavailable by science will be forcibly deflated
·         Any and all weapons, according to state law, will be made viewable on the body and may not be tucked into obtrusive places such as the thigh, boobs or vagina (Concealed weapons permits may be obtained from your local law enforcement department)
·         All hair is now subject to gravity
·         Shoes will be logical for the situation, this mean no stripper heels for anyone jumping from the second story
·         Men will wear non-descript loose clothing appropriate to their role in the video game
·         Massive muscles will now be prohibited unless the game properly delegates time for the gym by which men may gain their muscles
·         Guns will have responsive kick-back, bruises and soreness will be applied liberally
·         Your penis may not have proportions the size of your ego
·         There will be a weapons limit based upon the standard rules of physics and what objects may fit securely in a backpack
·         All conversations with voluptuous women will conducted in the presence of an unbiased third party and with mentally implied censor bars over breast and buttocks
·         Your devil-may-care attitude is now subject to the laws of physics as well as the laws afforded by the state in which you conduct your business as well as the federal for any actions that require a class action felony or the crossing of state boundaries. Breaking any of these laws will result in death, fines, arrest and prison
This new rules have been submitted for review by the board of People Who Make Money off this Stuff and are currently being processed for immediate implementation. Thank you for your input and patience on the matter.
Ani Wuman,
SCMCUW chairwoman

For anyone who missed the point, I’m simply pointing out that the argument, while interesting, is somewhat invalid on both sides and therefor requires more action, research and compromise before it can be fully overturned. Also, I like it when guys hold open the door and buy me drinks at the bar, so sue me.
Faithfully hating my gender, until next time. 

The Great Gaga

You knew at some point I would have go there. Some people believe she’s the world’s greatest troll herself, others believe that she is the godsend to the musical and cultural world. Whatever your opinion of her, you have to agree she’s very good at getting attention. Whether or not you believe this is a positive aspect of her character, you can’t deny that she seems to be using this talent for positive change as opposed to say, telling people not to get their children vaccinated or spewing crap about 9-11 (Yeah, Marky Mark, we all wanna throw you under the bus for that one.)
Anyway, as an educator, I’m always deeply concerned with the wellbeing of the children under my care. Yeah, once the little snot nosed brats go home, they’re someone else’s problem, but while they’re at school I have to put up with them and let me tell you, they’re a lot easier to handle when they’re in a good mood. I support any kind of anti-violence, anti-bully prospect on the market. So when Lady Gaga announced the start up of her anti-bully campaign, The Born This Way Foundation, I was naturally enthused. (The entirety of the article can be read here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/19/lady-gaga-launches-born-this-way-foundation_n_1217701.html)
But alas, the internet is never short of mentally deficient people that couldn’t pass a driver’s test if it was read to them (which in forty-eight states, yes, it can be read to you) but somehow someone let them get their idiot fingers on a computer. I envision pompously elite chubby guys whipping cheeto dust off their hands on their sweat pants before posting, because that seems about the level of brain cell required for stuff like this:

Carpe Diem!
10:13 AM on 01/22/2012
did not read announceme­nt..... just don't care. i wish she'd go awayyyyy!
02:02 PM on 01/21/2012
She will embrace the cause that makes her more popular. Any cause...
01:16 PM on 01/21/2012
Another looney tunes out for publicity. Announce it naked and at least two people would care.
01:08 PM on 01/21/2012
I thought she was going to announce that she is going to stop ripping off Madonna ...
12:49 PM on 01/20/2012
Yet another way to promote herself. Everything she does is about hype, promotion. She has been on the most suffocatin­g promotiona­l blitz I have ever seen a star undertake. It would make the old Will Smith blush.
These are just a few of the more applicable responses to her rally against bullying in America. When the trolls aren’t accusing her of ripping of Madonna, (Objection your honor, Relevance?) they’re accusing her of using this foundation as a new step in her publicity. The old, “She’s only doing it to be famous” schtick.
I don’t know if you have noticed, my darling troll community, but Lady Gaga is ALREADY FUCKING FAMOUS! Seriously? Come on! She is the head runner of a multi-MILLION DOLLAR empire. Every time she wants to increase her popularity, she releases a freaking CD! Or makes a line of OPI nail polish. Or she could punch a paparazzo. Jesus Freaking Christ, you think that what Lady Gaga needs is popularity? You either live under a rock or in one of those strange polygamist communities where you’re not allowed to have access to anything that the prophet deems satanic. (Relax, they aren’t real Mormons.)
It got me thinking that there is no possible way to response to these people other than to ignore them because they are clearly too malinformed and dense to understand any of my witty banter in the first place. Who then, should I respond to, if this particular breed of trolls seems to be so completely incapable of human speech?
Why not Lady Gaga herself? Not that she’ll ever read it, but if that was the point of my blog, it wouldn’t be a blog, now would it. Besides, I’m desperately searching for a job, why not kill two birds with one wll written stone:
To the Lady Gaga,
My name is of little importance due to the fact that anonymity on the internet is seldom upheld, so instead I will get straight to the point. Firstly I apologize on behalf of all the less than resplendent savants that grace the internet, knowing full and well that the only way to create a future sans dumbasses is to educate them early. Which brings me to my second point: Just graduating from college, I am desperately seeking terms of employment. I admire the diligence you give to the anti-bullying campaign and I wish to join you on your victorious quest to to bring about an age of more tolerant youth.(I contacted Madonna about being a sequin sewer, but she doesn’t want me so you might.) I hope together we might achieve a future of well-informed global citizens who cease the swirlies and gossip mongering of the high school halls. If you wish to contact me, find me on Monster.com (the job site, not your site, sorry.) Until then, samples of my writing may be found here: http://thedelicateartofthereversetroll.blogspot.com/
Thank you

Hopefully I receive some kind of application form in the next few weeks. I shall keep you updated. Until then, stay strong, fight back and win!